Veeam Backup and Restore to Azure

Veeam Backup and Replication is a data protection software product which gives users multiple options to protect their data, on-premise or in the public cloud.  I was working with a client recently and they needed assistance putting together the process to set up copying their data to Azure using Veeam with two goals:

1. Provide a secondary site for their data to be stored in the Azure cloud (3-2-1 Rule)
2. Use the secondary copy of data in Azure to migrate workloads to Azure longer term

The primary goal above is a fairly normal request so I want to concentrate on the second goal above and test how that works but we’ll start with getting the data to Azure first so we can use it for conversion.

First you need to provide a landing pad for your data in Azure.  I did this by navigating the Azure Marketplace and instantiating an Azure VM running Windows with Veeam pre-installed:

Once selected, I setup the components necessary to run the machine including VM name, VM disk type, username, password, subscription, and resource group:

Once the machine is deployed, I validated that the machine was running:

At this point in a production environment, you would build or use an existing VPN tunnel back to your on-premise environment.  Since this is a demo, I simply created a firewall rule on the Azure VM to accept all traffic/all ports from my Internet IP address where the Veeam server is running in my lab.

Once you have connectivity to the Azure VM, you can navigate your on-premise Veeam deployment and add the machine as a managed server and backup repository:

Now we can setup a backup copy job from the on-premise Veeam deployment to the new machine in Azure:

I’m using a test server (VMware VM) running Windows Server with a size of approximately 50GB:

Here I select the backup repository I created earlier targeting the machine in Azure

I’m not using any WAN Accelerators here so I select a direct copy:

I select the Backup Copy Job schedule/settings:

And Confirm/Enable the job:

Then validate the job is running as expected:

Once the data has had a chance to fully replicate to the cloud, I can import those backup jobs to the Veeam Backup and Replication instance running in Azure:

I navigate to the local backup file (.vbm Veeam Backup Metadata file) on my local disk where the repository is set:

Confirm and select OK:

Now the backup is imported to the Veeam Backup and Replication instance in Azure for use to Restore to Azure:

With the imported backup job selected, right-click and select Restore to Azure.  I’m using ARM so I select it in the deployment model options.

The next step not displayed here is to add your Azure subscription and select it for use to restore.  I really didn’t want to expose any of my subscription information for this blog entry which is why you don’t see it here.

Once your subscription is selected, you can select your VM size:

The default size is not large enough for my machine, so I clicked Edit and selected a new machine size:

I confirmed the size and selected the Storage Account in Azure where the VM should reside:

I then selected the Resource Group in Azure

Selected the Virtual Network for the VM

Confirmed and began the restoration process and conversion to VHD

Progress Indicator for the job:

Restore process beginning:

Restore complete

Logging for the restore process – notice the length of time.  It took Azure and Veeam a little over 5 minutes to copy/convert/and restore a 50GB machine to Azure:

Let’s navigate to the Azure Dashboard to find the virtual machine running – WINSRV02:

RDP into the machine to validate the hostname is accurate and we are complete!

This process was very simple to try, I recommend you do so as well.  The grand total for Azure costs associated with this demo was $1.51 so it is a relatively inexpensive process to pilot overall but make sure you are cognizant of the run time you are using in Azure to avoid that bill increasing.

In summary, the Backup and Restore to Azure option is great for one-way recovery in a DR scenario but also a strong option for those to leverage for lift-and-shift migrations to the public cloud.  Moving data back from Azure to VMware is a different challenge and not so straight-forward.  For more reading on the process above and Restore to Azure pre-requisites, please see the Veeam documentation here.